


How I Lost Harry to Malfoy (and Why I Don't Really Care)

by blithelybonny



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 09:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1382401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blithelybonny/pseuds/blithelybonny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ginny explains it all...</p>
            </blockquote>





	How I Lost Harry to Malfoy (and Why I Don't Really Care)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Character Lottery](http://hd-writers.livejournal.com/308478.html) bonus assignment for the 2014 Wizarding Games on LJ. I also snuck some Bingo Points in there. :) Go Team Lions!

It’s my own fault, really. I should have known better than to joke about _Malfoy_ to Harry. Harry’s obsession with Malfoy is the stuff of legends, after all.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he had a crush on you,” I said to Harry one day when he and I were getting ready for Bill’s birthday party at my parents’ house. I laughed because at the time, the idea was entirely absurd, of course. But, well, you all know how that little _joke_ turned out.

I remember the exact moment I lost Harry, too. I’m not upset about it -- not anymore, anyway. How can I be? Just watch them together for five minutes, and it’s obvious they were meant to be together, more so than Harry and I ever were.

Actually, it’s a bit cliched, isn’t it? Had Harry and I ended up together, we’d have been the fairy-tale ‘happy ever after’ ending, where the hero gets the girl, and they get married and have 2.5 children, and together they make up for the shit childhood and family the hero had before. Come to that, I really do look an awful lot like Lily Evans in some of those old photos of her … disturbingly so. What’s that thing called again -- an Oedipus complex? Well, thank Merlin for Malfoy saving Harry from that particularly gruesome fate.

But yes, the exact moment I lost him.

It was two summers after the Battle of Hogwarts, and the lot of us had gotten together on the public Pitch in Canterbury. We’d been doing the impromptu **Quidditch** thing for about six months at this point, and while we were picking sides as we usually did, with Malfoy and Parkinson sitting on their entitled arses and ridiculing our broomsticks and kits and everything just like always, Dean threw his broom down and shouted “I’ve bloody well had it with Quidditch!” 

Naturally, we were all a bit confused because even though he hadn’t played at Hogwarts, he seemed to have been enjoying it. I won’t lie, I’d certainly been enjoying seeing him decked out in his kit. Dean has really fantastic thighs … but anyway, we had no idea where the sudden burst of dramatics came from, and so Parkinson called out “Come on, Thomas, be a team player!” As if she knew anything about teamwork, but it’s fine. She did have something of a point, after all.

So then, Dean said, “I want to play **football**.” Just like that. No preamble, no explanation for those of us who had no bloody idea what he was on about because we weren’t Muggle-born. Just ‘I want to play football’. Then he Transfigured the Quaffle into a funny-looking ball, tossed it on the ground, and started sort of kicking it back and forth between his feet. “Come on, football … it’ll be fun,” he said, and then he started off toward the center of the Pitch, kicking the ball a bit ahead of himself and then catching it with his feet.

It’s exactly as odd as you can imagine. And with only Dean and Andy Kirke knowing the actual rules, and the rest of us just making shit up as we went along, it made for one hell of a footie game.

I’m coming to the point, I promise! So we’re playing the game, and Dean absolutely insisted on shirts vs. skins, which frankly, I had no objection to at all. Harry was on skins, and you know, he’s got that delectable happy trail and is deceptively fit beneath all those layers of baggy clothing he always wears, and I know I wasn’t the only one ogling him a bit. But Malfoy took it to a level that bordered on art.

“Look at Potter, Pans,” he said loudly, after Harry had done this sort of fancy kicking move that landed him flat on his arse. “I didn’t think it was possible to be so bloody terrible at a sport where all you do is run around, but I suppose being the Sod Who Lived doesn’t make you superior at everything after all.”

“I don’t see you out here even giving it a try, Malfoy,” Harry replied, but he was still laughing about his fall, so he wasn’t really paying Malfoy the amount of attention that Malfoy so obviously wanted.

So Malfoy huffed and stretched his legs out in front of himself, before he leaned over to Parkinson and said, again in a too loud voice, “Thinks he’s witty now, too, doesn’t he?” Parkinson just rolled her eyes and went back to the magazine she was reading, but it didn’t matter because Malfoy really only wanted a reaction from Harry (which, can I just add, was obvious to literally everyone _except_ Harry because he’s an unbelievably oblivious git).

That was when Harry lost his temper. “You know what, Malfoy?” he said, hefting himself up off the ground. “Why don’t you put your money where your giant mouth is?”

Malfoy, and the rest of us, had no idea what Harry was talking about. “I beg your pardon?” he asked, folding his arms across his chest and raising an eyebrow with that practiced disdain of his. He looked a bit nervous, though, no matter how much he tried to hide it.

Harry has this tendency to loom over a person, even though he’s not particularly tall, when he’s feeling especially confident, and he did just that. He walked over to Malfoy and loomed there (admittedly, it was quite sexy, since he still hadn’t got his shirt on and he was all sweaty and what have you from the footballing we’d been doing). “I challenge you to a **wizard’s duel** ,” he said, with this cavalier grin on his face.

Malfoy looked stricken for a minute, and he looked over at Parkinson, but she was adamantly ignoring the goings-on. (Even though we’d all sort of made amends at this point, she was still really awkward around Harry.) Then, he seemed to get his Malfoy-ness back because he sat up straighter and met Harry’s eye with a haughty expression. He drawled, in that terribly posh way of his, “No need to puff up like a peacock, Potty. We’re all quite well aware of your alleged dominance.”

Harry leaned in and rested his hands on either side of the bench Malfoy sat on, and he said, only just loud enough that it was obviously only meant for Malfoy’s ears, “Scared?”

I’ve heard the story of their Second Year duel, so I know that when Malfoy smiled briefly before it turned into his normal smirk, he had just recognized what Harry had said for what it really meant. Malfoy leaned forward just so that his lips were inches away from Harry’s own and said, “You wish.”

That was it. That was the exact moment that I lost Harry Potter for good.

Some people think it was later, when Malfoy and Harry started spending time together just the two of them, playing Seeker’s games or getting coffee when they _just so happened_ to end up at the same shop at the same time. Some think it was the Incident at the Bowling Alley (that’s another story, and yes, it’s _hilarious_ , but we don’t have time right now for me to get into it). But they’re wrong. It was that little exchange on a Quidditch Pitch.

So naturally, it came as absolutely no surprise to me when, about a month later, Harry rang me up on the Floo and asked if I could come through to talk, in that serious way that always means ‘You’re about to be broken up with.’ I was still really angry, mind, and a Bat-Bogey Hex or four might have been thrown in haste, but I wasn’t surprised.

But now? I’m really happy that they’re together, and it’s only partly because Dean Thomas now fucks me six ways from Sunday on the regular. It’s mostly because I can see that Harry is finally, well and truly happy. And that’s all I ever wanted for him - even when we were children and I couldn’t even open my bloody mouth in front of him. I just wanted him to be happy. And he really, really is. With Draco sodding Malfoy.


End file.
